news

Most college students take a break from their studies during the summer months, but a good number of proactive Georgia Gwinnett College (GGC) students have spent that time learning career-defining skills as interns at a variety of companies and organizations. Here are a few of their stories:

Grayson Scott, business major

Grayson Scott, a senior from Lawrenceville studying management in GGC’s School of Business, landed an internship at the Atlanta office of the U.S. General Services Administration’s Office of Professional Services and Human Capital (PSHC). He was one of only 17 students selected for an internship position with the PSHC nationally, and the only college student from Georgia to do so. The PSHC is responsible for delivering federal government professional services, human capital and charge card management services.

A typical internship day for Scott is filled with working on presentations and learning new technology and website software.

“It changes on a day-to-day basis. We do a lot of meetings,” he laughed. “But they’re always different kinds of meetings.”

The internship lasts until Aug. 11, possibly leading to a part-time job during the fall and spring semesters.

Scott said he’s learning management and leadership skills during his internship that will translate to the career he’s working towards. The internship has helped him pay for tuition and he hopes it will lead to a full-time position at PSHC.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in business, Scott’s dream is to one day attend mortuary school and eventually own his own funeral home.

Karen Ramos, cinema and media arts production major

Karen Ramos, also a senior from Lawrenceville, is a cinema and media arts production student in GGC’s School of Liberal Arts. Ramos is spending the summer as a videography intern at Camp Towanda, a co-ed sleep-away camp for kids in the picturesque Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. She found the internship through GGC Career Services.

Ramos is responsible for videotaping all the activities the youngsters participate in at the camp, which has provided ample opportunity for her to work on her skills in capturing action on film, something she hopes to apply to a career in event or sports media videography when she graduates.

“The camp is very focused on sports, like soccer, lacrosse and hockey, but they also have lots of outdoor adventure activities like swimming lessons and water skiing,” said Ramos. “They also have lots of other fun activities, like one day we had a silent disco. It’s a lot of fun, and my job is to capture the excitement of it all.”

Ramos said she is getting great hands-on practice during the two-and-a-half-month internship.

“I am getting great work experience,” she said. “I’m working with people who have the same interests, which is invaluable. I’ve been used to working by myself on school projects for the most part. I’m also learning a lot from my mentor, Erica, who is a professional editor. That’s something I’m interested in and not many people know how to do.”

After graduating in December, Ramos hopes to work on a sports media team for a franchise like Atlanta United or at Mercedes Benz Stadium.

Jezatbeth Perez, nursing major

Jezatbeth Perez, a junior from Mexicali, Mexico, studying nursing in GGC’s School of Health Sciences, found a summer internship at Northside Hospital Gwinnett by attending a hiring event.

Perez shadows a patient care tech to observe and learn the ins and outs of that job, which include taking vitals, mobility, feeding and other basic needs.

“We help patients get up and move around, give them their food and feed them, if necessary,” said Perez. “I’m in the cardiac intensive care unit, where some patients are intubated and right out of cardiac surgery, so every two hours, we turn them so they don’t get pressure sores.”

The internship will last as long as Perez is in school and requires a minimum participation of one day a month.

“Everyone has been very nice,” said Perez. “I always have questions, and my mentors are always open to helping me. It’s given me a lot of insight into how things work in a hospital, so I won’t have to go in blindly after graduating. I really like the experience. I enjoy helping patients get better after their surgery.”

After her first round of clinicals, Perez was awarded the Daisy Award, which was created to recognize and celebrate nursing students for the above-and-beyond care and compassion shown to patients and their families.

After graduating in December, Perez plans to continue working in a cardiac intensive care unit and to seek a master’s degree as a nursing anesthesiologist.

Joel Suazo, biochemistry major

Joel Suazo, a junior from Loganville studying biochemistry in the college’s School of Science and Technology, has been interning with Project SEED, an American Chemical Society research program that brings students from underserved backgrounds to college and university campuses for eight-to-ten weeks at host institutions like GGC, where they work alongside faculty to conduct scientific research.

Suazo participated in Project SEED as a high school student and continued his research when he enrolled in GGC. He has been working on a project with Dr. Ajay Mallia, associate professor of chemistry, trying to perfect extracting cyclotides from Australian Violets, which are pharmaceutically active self-healing materials that have huge potential for use as pharmaceutical drugs.

Suazo mentors current high school students in the program as an intern, answering simple chemistry questions and chaperoning them. He also teaches them how to use some highly scientific lab equipment.

“I’m there to help support Dr. Mallia,” said Suazo. “Recently, I was teaching one of the students to use a differential scanning calorimeter, which measures the melting point of a compound, and recently I taught another student how to use the thermal gravimetric analyzer, which measures the weight loss of a compound.”

Suazo said the most surprising thing about being an intern in the program has been the load of his responsibility.

“Working with these high school students made me realize how much professors do for their students,” he said. “There are a lot of people depending on them.”

Suazo said working with such a motivated group of high school students all summer has been inspiring.

“Seeing how gifted these students has been an eye-opener,” he said. “They could be on vacation in the pool all summer, but they took the time to be here and do research. That’s motivation for me to push myself, study harder and become a better scholar.”

After graduation, Suazo wants to attend medical school and specialize in plastic surgery.